


there was no sacred place

by firstaudrina



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 11:37:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2066682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's in the moment between wishing and knowing that Lestat realizes the approaching figure is Louis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there was no sacred place

**Author's Note:**

> kind of a reworking/rewriting of a canon scene. don't sue me, anne!

Lestat is ensconced in the house in Carmel Valley, a thoroughly modern contraption of cool glass and cold cement with sharp, minimalistic furniture and accents of silver gleaming in the dim, atmospheric light. Lestat lounges on the angular black leather sofa, his boots up on the glass coffee table, his body in a deep and careless sprawl. A movie plays on the television.  _Taxi Driver_. Lestat finds it stylish but without grace, and he is disturbed by the young prostitute in a way he would rather not address at this late hour. He is tired, he has fed, and he can feel the pull of the distant sun already. But it's no matter; Lestat has always tried his damndest to hold out against the sun, and tonight is no different.  
  
First he feels a prickling along his senses, little hairs along his arms standing on end.  
  
He sits up slowly, trying to quell the excitement and anticipation rising in him quick enough as to be laughable. It's one of  _them_ , he's certain; finally, some supernatural creature drawn by his music has come to find him, to penetrate the sanctuary he has built here with his little human band. For company, perhaps? Solidarity? Or, more deliciously, for a fight – Lestat cannot deny he has a taste for this more than any other outcome.  
  
But then he investigates further.  
  
Second is the sound, very far away, of footsteps on soft grass. The pace is unhurried, but the fact that the creature allows itself to be heard at all is notable.  
  
Lestat stands before the huge glass doors, floor to ceiling transparency revealing the entire vista of green hills, dark now and hooded by stars. It is one of his dangerous little games, all the glass, for even a second of daylight would so suffuse the compound as to burn him up instantly.  
  
Third is the sight of a small figure moving closer and closer to the large house. Lestat puts his fingertips to the glass as he leans in eagerly – no oils on his fingertips to smudge the surface, no real heat to cloud it. The door slides open under his hands and Lestat passes through it like a ghost.  
  
The balmy air passes over his skin in a caress, a cool California night with the threat of the day already in the air. It's soon, the sunrise. Perhaps too soon.  
  
It's in the moment between wishing and knowing that he realizes the approaching figure is Louis.  
  
Lestat's heartbeat picks up. (Just yesterday he had teased and flirted his way through a press conference, correcting for what felt like the millionth time all the misconceptions of vampire bodies. "Of course we have heartbeats, my darling," he'd purred at a reporter. "How else to move your lovely blood through our veins?") He finds himself stepping forward, one foot before the other, fast, too fast, not a run but a brisker walk than any mortal would be capable of producing.  
  
In seconds, they stand facing one another. In moments. In heartbeats. Louis stands against the backdrop of darkened hills like a shadow, blending easily except for a visible white hand, a pale throat, the bright cheek. His clothes hang on him, a well-worn dark sweater and black jeans, scuffed boots. His hair has been cut short (for tonight at least) with apparent impatience, the ends hanging haphazard around his face. He looks like one of them, one with the modern age. He has always slipped so easily amongst mortals, even more easily than Lestat himself.  
  
Lestat stands against the white concrete of his current enclave, the unnatural blue of the lit-up pool. His hair is nearly as pale as his flesh in the washed-out fluorescence, his eyes starkly blue. For his part, he wears black leather and an open black shirt, a long thin chain around his neck with a little cross at the end of it, for laughs. He watches Louis' gaze travel over all of this, ending at the cross, and watches as something like amusement seems to lend a cast to Louis' generally unreadable face.  
  
Silence reigns.  
  
Then Lestat remarks, "You don't call, you don't write…"  
  
And Louis smiles, as brief and devastating as ever. "I did visit, once."  
  
"Lies," Lestat declares. "I denied that visit  _in print_ , so truly it's as though it never happened."  
  
"That terrible vanity rears its head again," Louis says.  
  
"You've given up yours, though, I see," Lestat counters, reaching out to touch the ratty sweater – inappropriate and too much as always, but unable to resist, thrilling at the solidity of Louis beneath his fingers.  
  
"Come, Lestat," Louis says gently, and the sound of Lestat's name in his voice is an ache, "Are we to be strangers even now?"  
  
Lestat's hesitating fingers smooth and he presses his entire hand, palm flat, right about Louis' heart. He fancies he can feel the calm, unwavering beat of it. His hand slides up to curve over Louis' shoulder, then to grip it tightly, and finally he pulls Louis hard against his chest, wraps both arms around him. Louis answers the embrace with the same fervor, his fingernails biting into Lestat's back even through the shirt, wonderfully fierce.  
  
Not once in the years past had they embraced like this. They had clutched one another in passion, in fury, had fought and suffered and wanted, but Lestat does not think they ever  _missed_  one another before.  
  
Lestat runs his hands over Louis' sturdy, narrow shoulders, his graceful neck, his ears, his cheeks, his lips, his jaw. Louis is unchanged by time yet rendered unknown all the same. Louis is like a house Lestat has not visited in many years, though in his heart he still knows every room.  
  
Louis' hands alight softly on Lestat in return – a touch here, there, a thumb trailing over the bump in Lestat's nose. Lestat has not felt such affection from Louis since before his turning, when Louis was human and hot with fever and he clutched at Lestat as only a dying man could.  
  
"You're in danger," Lestat notes.  
  
Louis gives an uncaring shrug, a tossed off nod. "So are you," he says. "But that's not why I came."  
  
Lestat strokes the short hair at the nape of Louis' neck. It seems his body retains the memory of it from all those years ago, the silken texture of Louis' hair, and aches and aches. "Then why did you?"  
  
Simply, "You wanted me to."  
  
And Lestat had. Beneath the grandeur of his public gestures, his ridiculous gallivanting, the attention he would always crave – beneath it all had been a simple goal, to reach Louis again.  
  
In the back pocket of Louis' ill-fitting jeans is a folded-up paperback of Lestat's book, the partner of the half-shredded copy of  _Interview_  that sleeps with Lestat in his coffin each day.  
  
"Will you come in?" Lestat asks, gesturing back at the house.  
  
"Oui, Monsieur Le Rock Star," Louis says, his measured tone as polite as ever and the only hint of humor lurking deep somewhere in his green eyes.  
  
They lose their words as they cross the threshold, sit awkwardly like mortal teens side by side on the couch. The end of the movie runs red with blood on screen, its dim electronic light rendering them both alien. Lestat cannot keep himself from touching Louis' face and his hair again and again, though he does not dare to kiss, not yet. They grow comfortable together, but quiet.  
  
Louis dozes. Lestat takes his hand and turns it over, remembering the long, elegant fingers, the cool dry skin. The sleeves of Louis' sweater are overlong and so he has folded them up, but there is a bulkiness to the folded knit that seems unnatural, as though it's hiding something. So, careful not to wake him, Lestat unfolds it. And there it is, a small locket of sorts pinned to the wool, very old-fashioned. Perhaps Victorian. And when it is opened there is the face of a small blonde girl, her gaze dark and direct even in miniature. The unexpectedness of it cuts through to Lestat almost as much as the sight of her does and he cannot stifle a sharp, stilted breath as he clicks the locket closed.  
  
Then there is Louis' voice, soft and not a bit sleepy. "You'll forgive my sentimentality."  
  
"I will forgive you anything," Lestat says graciously despite his unease, though he adds a moment later, "Except that hideous outfit."  
  
Louis' mouth twists, not quite a smile.  
  
"The sun is rising," Lestat murmurs then. "You won't have time to go." He gaze slides over flirtatiously, though of course Louis can see right through him. "Do you remember your first night?"  
  
So they go together into Lestat's coffin, on their sides, face to face. Lestat's fingers find the little locket unwillingly. "You mourn her still," he says, quiet and breathless.  
  
"Now is not the time to speak of her," Louis says, but the unspoken lingers: they will speak of her, they'll have to, or this respite between them will never last.  
  
Lestat's hand goes up to pull the lid of the coffin down, drinking in the sight of Louis' face before darkness swallows them. The straight brows, the lips that seem to frown even when resting, the flashing green of his eyes – Lestat commits it to memory all over again.  
  
Then time for just one whisper in the darkness –  _will you stay_  crossing Lestat's lips unbidden as his eyes grow heavy with sleep. Instead of words Louis answers with the squeeze of his hand, the press of his body so very close.  
  
There are no guarantees but this: he will be there when Lestat wakes.


End file.
